Hitachi's new Deskstar 7K500 drive marks several milestones in the storage industry: It's the first desktop hard drive to reach 500GB and one of the first to use the speedy new SATA II interface. In terms of how it stores data, though, the Deskstar may be among the last of its kind, as drive manufacturers begin to approach the limits of how densely they can pack data using today's standard recording technology.

Demand for greater capacity continues to rise due in large part to a growing need for music and video storage on PCs and consumer electronics devices. To meet that need, storage vendors are turning to new recording technologies. The first of these, perpendicular recording, will debut from Toshiba this year.